Welcome to issue 6 of JavaScript Weekly - thanks for reading. Without further ado, on to the news.

This week's top news

WebGL Support now in Chrome Beta—
WebGL is a 3D graphics API for JavaScript - think a 3D Canvas on steroids. It's been around a while but has been tricky to enable in browsers with alpha support for it. Chrome now has it enabled by default in its latest 'beta channel' release. Check it out - Google's 'Body Browser' app is a great tech demo.

New JavaScript Master Class Announced for Jan 2011—
Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs (script.aculo.us) have announced their newest JavaScript masterclass - set for January 20/21, 2011. OK, it's not cheap, but I've quizzed previous attendees on Twitter and they've said it was good value for money for spending 8 hours with two JavaScript gurus.

Mozilla Vows To Match Google's JavaScript Performance—
Last week I linked to news about Google's 'Crankshaft' optimizations for V8. Mozilla has quickly fought back saying that they pioneered run-time type specialization and will be working hard to equal or beat the performance of V8. It's a fun time for JavaScript performance for sure.

This week's top articles

Deep Inside Node.js with Ryan Dahl—
InfoQ interviews Ryan Dahl, the creator of Node.js. He talks about Node's performance, compares Node to other server side JavaScript systems, and gives some ideas on where Node is going next.

What to Read to Get Up to Speed in JavaScript—
jQuery core member Rey Bango collects together a list of books and blogs suitable for introductory, intermediate, and advanced JavaScript developers in order to get to the next level.

Strict Mode is Coming To Town—
JavaScript guru Douglas Crockford celebrates the first anniversary of the ECMAScript Programming Language Standard, Fifth Edition with an explanation of the 'strict mode' coming in future versions of JavaScript. Strict Mode is an opt-in mode that repairs or removes some of the language’s most problematic features.

The Safe Factory Pattern - Private Instance State in JavaScript—
Duarte Cunha Leao looks at ECMAScript 5's support for accessor properties, giving you more control over the state within your objects. He then looks at getting similar functionality in existing JavaScript implementations using several 'safe factory' patterns.

JavaScript BDD with Jasmine (without a browser)—
Julian Simpson demonstrates how to use the in-browser Jasmine BDD (Behavior Driven Development) library in a headless browser using Rhino. The wins? No browser windows need to be spawned and it makes continuous integration easier.

Interesting new libraries and code

ControlJS: ASync Script Loading and More from Steve Souders—
Steve Souders (Googler and creator of YSlow) is working on a new JavaScript module that makes scripts load faster and smoother. You might be familiar with HeadJS and LABjs but ControlJS goes a lot further and Steve explains how in 3 great blog posts.

Easel.JS: JS Library for Working with HTML5 Canvas—
The new Canvas element in HTML5 is powerful, but it can be difficult to work with. It has no internal concept of discrete display elements, so you are required to manage updates manually. The Easel Javascript library provides a full, hierarchical display list, a core interaction model, and helper classes to make working with Canvas much easier.